Pădurea Craiului Mountains: Meziad Cave

Meziad Cave is known and studied since the late nineteenth century and has been developed for tourism at the beginning of the twentieth century. Today, part of its natural and cultural heritage revealed by scientists and cavers can be visited by tourists along a 1500 m path. Most of its chambers and passages are restricted to research for protection and conservation purposes. Meziad Cave is a landmark of the Pădurea Craiului Mountains (Apuseni Mountains, northwestern Romania) due to its diversity of scientific, aesthetic, and recreational values, such as: particular morphology characterized by huge voids, rare phosphate minerals related to the guano deposits, massive wind-controlled stalactites, some of the largest bat colonies in Romania, diverse and endemic subterranean fauna, and valuable paleontological and archeological remains.